Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Hurricane Sandy

was a category one storm with the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in the Atlanticand dimensions to do justice to a disaster movie.
Just what the hell are we to do when it is a category five with these dimensions churning up the Northeast Corridor?
What are we gonna do?
Flee to Montreal?



Tuesday, October 30, 2012

So Scott Brown chickened out of tonight's debate

On account of the hurricane?

The kids are goin' to school in Menotomy...the DPW is out in force, everyone is workin' hard on it.
What the hell is Scott Brown gonna do tonight?  Clear debris with his super-breath? Fuse downed power lines with his heat-vision?

The storm of politics

Some differences cut to the core of a respective presidential candidate.

Yesterday,  Mitt Romney took time out of his busy campaign schedule to call up the governors of the states in Hurricane Sandy's storm path to offer sympathy.
Except of course, true to form, he only called the republican governors.
Vintage Romney, cold unfeeling and selfish to the last.

President Obama on the other hand, held conference calls with all the affected state governors and it it looks like he followed up with personal calls to each and every governor involved.
Hell, Chris Christie praised the President's performance at a press conference yesterday, a virtual campaign commercial unto itself live on CNN.
Indeed, vintage Obama in every way.


Monday, October 29, 2012

Back during the GOP Primaries

Candidate Mitt Romney wanted to close down FEMA, pass its responsibilities back to the states if not completely privatize disaster relief.

Of course that was in June 2011, plenty of time for Willard and Eric Fehnstrom to shake the old etch-a-sketch and turn Mitt into FEMA bestest friend evah.
Like I said before many many times, Romney is not indecisive, vacuous yes but never equivocal. He is always for something until the balance of payoffs changes, then he changes his position and becomes for something else with equal vehemence.
Accusations of hypocrisy are then deflected as the cantings of the biased liberal media....and he usually gets away with it as well.
Sickening but breathtakingly functional as well.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Per the Boston Globe Mitt Romney has been stumping Ohio

extolling his bipartisan ability to "get along with democrats" based on his brief tenure as Governor of democrat-heavy Massachusetts.
Well, as I recall Mitt's idea of "Getting Along With Democrats"consisted on passive aggression, artful hiding under the bed, a little bit of ineffectual bluster and that familiar Romney smarm.
He spent very little time in the state so his "bipartisanship" neither offended or helped much for that matter.
But it is his "bipartisan ability" to get along with republicans that everyone should scrutinize in great detail.
The man has never had to deal with republicans who had any sort of power over him and his agenda, there is no telling how "President" Romney would react to a determined pushback from the back benches of the House GOP Caucus?
Mitt's most likely reaction though will be one of craven surrender or evasion or passive aggression....or something.
He'll think of something, just wanting to be President badly makes him a decisive statesman...doesn't 
it??
Still Mitt has made literally thousands of promises to the conservative right, he can do that pretty freely because he does not feel himself obligated to follow thru owing to his rhetorical disconnect from the issues which I have covered off in previous (and interminable) posts.
But what happens when others, in the House GOP Caucus and elsewhere people with independent bases of power, start holding him responsible?
I think he'll melt away into rhetorical abstraction...like the Wicked Witch the Wizard of Oz.
I could be wrong, but then again that would be the best case scenario...

The Governor of Maryland has called out the National Guard

to deal with the project damages inflicted by Hurricane Sandy.

Does this mean that Colonel Scott Brown (AKA the Junior Senator from Massachusetts and Wall Street's own Great White Hope) will be "Called to the Colors"and have to take up his action station manning the pumps in the basement of the Calvert County Court House??


Friday, October 26, 2012

LWV Candidate's Night, 10-24-2012, Dateline the Chenery Middle School Belmont Ma

Honest to Ghod, if I hear independent candidate for state rep (24th Middlesex) Jim Gammill utter "fiscal viability" one more I'm gonna start hitting myself over the head with a two by four to drown him out.

Ah yes, the LWV held a ballot-question and candidate's forum over in Belmont Wednesday night, it was sparsely attended and the questions from the aud were uninspired given the number of contested races this year.

Other than that there isn't a lot to report from the 24th Middlesex State Rep's race, everyone wants transparency, a bigger bang for the buck in public transportation they want development halted in the Belmont Uplands and on the Mugar Property.
As far as the later two issues are concerned there is no great disagreement between Republican Tomi Olson, Independent James Gammill and Democrat Dave Rogers even as to the means.
No if there were differences between the candidates, it was mostly on the dispirited and dissipated issue of who is the outsider?
By that I mean in nigh every other sentence Citizens Gammill & Olson belabored their years and years of Belmont Residency and eons of service to that Holy Township.
It was all a bit much I mean is the right address their soul difference with Rogers (a resident of North Cambridge)?
So it would seem...I understand the need for a dose of "Belmont Nationalism", it is to be expected, but Gammill & Olson are about as subtle as a sledgehammer when wielding that issue.
Hell Olson was so taken with her local bona fides she completely blanked on her own closing statement   and could even recall the usual GOP boilerplate about stimulating small businesses.
Like I said dispiriting...Rogers got off a good parting line about "Its not about where you are from it is about where you stand"....it was about the only memorable thing said all night.
Nonetheless I am warming to Rogers he is a good listener, has a certain amount of wit and a feisty look in his eye.
Still the word on the street is, this is a fight between Gammill and Olson to secure a strong second place finish, if possible deny Rogers a majority in the process and set the state for a "do over" in 2014.
Even 50% would be considered a setback in the current climate.
Allegedly, Gammill has $30k on hand to bombard Belmont voters will mailers between now and election day, a second place finish would set him up nicely for 2014 either as a dissident democrat or an independent.
Otherwise the man has no presence to speak of, outside Belmont, so all of this speaks to a vast effort to galvanize the disgruntled cohorts within that town.
Will it work likely not given turnout this year but it could well set the stage for another series of contested primaries and elections two years hence.
Well...clearly this is how they play the game in Belmont, it seems so petty but thar yuh go.


Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Anyone interested in the 24th Middlesex House race...

is advised to get over the Chenery Middle School 95 Washington Street in Belmont tonight for the League of Women Voters candidates & ballot questions forum @ 7:30pm.

This may prove as good an anecdotal indicator of the relative strength of the three captioned candidates...lacking any reliable polling of course.

I would also point out on a purely anecdotal level of course, I am seeing more and more Gammill lawn signs up and down Common Street in Belmont.
Gammill of course is the well heeled independent in the race, the one unafraid to traffic in his Carter Admin bona fides...

Just sayin' thass all....

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Yes I am on vacation...

but I still found time to call into the Left Ahead Podcast to wallow in "sarcastic rant driven chatter" for thirty five minutes.
Check it out, because my debased baritone is really just what this election cycle needs...

Monday, October 22, 2012

Note to the Laity

Humble Elias is on vacation this week and will be updating This, The Little Blog That Cried, whimsically and sporadically until next week.
Unless of course Mitt Romney starts babbling at the debate tonight about his attempts to "intervene" with Lindsay Lohan via the Vulcan Mind Meld.
I will be all over that sh*t never fear.

George S. McGovern, R.I.P.

War is a tremendous crucible of leadership.

Something like five US President's served in the ranks during World War II,  some of them even with distinction.
That was George McGovern's war, he was a bomber pilot who flew thirty five missions over the heavily defended Ploesti oil fields in Romania, he got the Distinguished Flying Cross for his troubles and had the prairie thrift to return his aircraft more or less intact.
From that war McGovern extracted a lot of life lessons, in the fragility of human affairs, a fateful sense of consequence and sure knowledge of what constituted a meaningless war having fought a must-win conflict to the finish.
All that and the poor bastard never learned how to win a national election against Richard Milhous Nixon.
***
Ah but McGovern was incorruptible, he came out against the Viet Nam War when it was still risky, he ran for President when he was polling below Sam Yorty, he never said anything he didn't mean or could ever regret...And sadly in America those are the guys who get beaten every time.
***
Y'know I voted for McGovern, yes indeedy, in the Massachusetts Primary in 1984, the Former Senator was by then running as a deficit hawk and something of an infrastructure populist.  It was an odd mix but McGovern made it work.  I recall with some nostalgia a campaign rally at the Palace Theater in Manchester NH headlined by Arlo Guthrie.
The candidate looked like he was having the time of his life...
I took it into my head that since 1984 wasn't going to be a good year for democrats, why not nominate
McGovern at the very least he will engage then President Reagan on the level of pure ideology and the American People will have a full debate on the issues with no apologies.
Well of course, the electorate would have none of my idea...If McGovern had a problem in politics it wasn't his hard core liberalism, he was that on so many issues he was right from the start...and those are  the statesmen that accrue only honor, not necessarily power.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

One thing I like about David Bernstein...

Is that he will answer a hypothetical question.

In this case, on his self proclaimed "Ask Me Anything Day" I asked that IF Scott Brown lost next month, mightn't his wife, Gail Huff consider a political career?

He counted the concept intriguing but noted aligning her with the right race might prove dicey.

Well it was a sort of blue-sky query anyway, if she is so willing to alibi for her husband and directly criticize Citizen Warren in all those commercials, seems like she is already "in politics" whether Ms. Huff likes it or not.

Anyway as I've said before, either we are quit of Scott Brown in this election cycle or we never will be until his pride swollen head carries him off to some wintery Waterloo in the snows of the New Hampshire Primary...

Friday, October 19, 2012

Colonel Scott Brown

that fearless part time lawyer  in the Maryland National Guard, that hero with over thirty billable hours in a combat zone....sends me a glossy mailer extolling his pro-choice bona fides every week.
Why I do not know, you'd think I'd be the one democrat in the state he'd a written off by now.

I'm guessing his numbers have plateau'd among independents (traditionally the GOP's main path to statewide office in the Commonwealth) so in expectation of a tight race he is trying to pick off undecided democrats although polling indicates Citizen Warren has a high degree of party unity behind her.
And then there are those ads Gail Huff is doing for Brown on TV, all aimed at women...So I'm  guessing that Brown thinks his margin of victory (should he win) is built around undecided women and disaffected democrats.
Will it work I don't know, this remains in my mind a very tight race  no matter what the good or bad news we extract from the polling.
Personally I've always found it a little tasteless the way Brown trots out his wife and daughters to cover his ass on reproductive issues, he has had two years to actually run up a positive record in this area and has manfully declined to do so....

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Oh Gee...

Mitt Romney is in a lather about lithium battery manufacturer A123's bankruptcy...they got 5 million in stimulus funds and thus are somehow a example of the Obama admin's socialistic policy failures.
IF ONLY Bain Capital Group was in on this mishaugas, those A123  manufacturing jobs and the supporting technology would be efficiently shipped out to China safe and sound!
Romney always knew how to pick winners at Bain, he'd pick em unerringly and then ship them out to the People's Republic of China.
Twenty years as a venture capitalist, and I'm not sure Citizen Romney has set one lathe a turning or kept one factory open.
Romney is good at creating big value pay out for his partners, he doesn't know shit about job creation never has never will.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Romney & women...

Apparently the former viceroy's goal in last night's debate was to "reach out to women" .
He has to say the least a contentious relationship with that particular gender having ended the political careers of some three female aspirants to the Governorship of the Commonwealth (two of them republicans)...and then there is his unctuous patronizing 19th century attitude towards women which makes most observers wonder if Mitt Romney has ever worked for a woman or been responsible to a woman other than his late mother?
Well...I've said it before and I'll say it again Ardith Wieworka was a hardworking head of the Child Service's Office before Romney fired her in 2004 allegedly because she wanted to marry her same gender life partner.
Shown the door by the chilly crew around the then Governor,  Ms. Wieworka was allegedly told it was nothing personal but they wanted "someone more like us" doing her job.
Thus Romney commenced his seemingly eternal quest for the White House by firing someone able and passionate about their job but also someone different...and Romney plain hates The Different.
And that is Mitt's real attiude towards women in a nutshell, he is adept at eructating the right sounding sentiments & hiring decorous female aides but he has never in his life tolerated a woman "getting out of line" just as he would never tolerate a woman dictating any terms to him. I am not even gonna get into the whole abortion mishaugas since his position on the issue has already shifted twice in the past week and that moving target will undoubtedly pick up speed as we get closer to election day.Ar

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The Campaign for the Twenty Fourth Middlesex in Picture....

A pop quartet serenades pedestrians on behalf of GOP candidate for State Representative Tomi Olson at Robbins Farm Park in Arlington on Saturday October 13th at about 3:30 pm EDT.
When it comes to innovative campaign gimmicks, Arlington has always been historically speaking barren territory.
The classic "lawn sign" has only recently come into general usage...if you can believe it.

On the other hand I have to wonder why Olson is devoting time to "innovative campaign tactics" in Arlington at all.  This general election is akin to the democratic primary, "A battle for the heart and soul of Belmont Ma".  Olson must conquer or die there and not scramble so much for votes in places like Precinct 12 in Arlington wherein an overwhelming democratic majority resides.
Of course it is interesting, that nowhere in her campaign advertising does Olson overtly identify herself as a republican.
Maybe she is hoping for a little confusion in the polls come election to swing some votes her way.
Well anyway...the band had some chops from what I could hear of it.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Riffing on Ayn Rand

That damn motion picture has given me "objectivism on the brain"....
More and more I am given to think that the sheer downfall of Ayn Rand can be traced back to her reflexive hatred of academics & intellectuals. The whole subtext of "Atlas Shrugged" (regardless of Dagny Taggart's quest to mate with some species of heavy machinery) reeks of anti-intellectualism and a visceral loathing for academics holding any sort of position of public trust.
Well...to be fair, Rand was never too popular with the academy (philosophers & theologians with "sophomore appeal" all have this problem) so there is an element of tit for tat at work here. And what better way to subvert academia than by creating a faith that would unite the monied sectors of the overclass and immantenize the libertarian eschaton?
And so thus a militant atheistic founds a cult...
***
Objectivists are burdened by the lack of a homeland some sovereignty they can point to as triumph of thought turned to action, they way ye Olde Comintern could always point with pride to the USSR as a model of the coming Marxist Leninist Utopia.
On the other hand, minus the small town Baptist shamanism, Texas looms more and more as a sort of Objectivist paradise.
The Governor is a constitutionally powerless loudmouth, the state is largely controlled by corporations, lawyers  and sundry shills.  Politics is completely corrupted by payola, life of the street is violent despite the frequent recourse to the gallows and the whole state is polluted to an absurd degree...but then again taxes are low and education is held in low regard by almost everyone.
Sounds like "Galt's Gulch" to me....

Sunday, October 14, 2012

"Atlas Shrugged Part II" duly reviewed and blogged

Over at Channel Zero.

To which I can only add, how is it that when Objectivists (that self selected elite of would be herrenvolk) make a movie of their Messiah's own Koran it ends up being a cheap tawdry exploitation movie enacted by E-List helots?
***
Ah but Ayn Rand was never known for her irony or subtle wit, she set out to create a anti-communist theology and largely succeeded at least as far as her tiny band of cultists are concerned.
Of course the theme of the book is nothing new the Overclass goes on strike to end the predations of the ravenous looters and their underclass hirelings. As far back as 1907 Ernest Bramah described a strike by the middle and upper classes of Great Britain to oust an all powerful labor government in his book The Secret of the League. The conspirators break the power of the coal miners union and are then free and clear to set up a non-parliamentary government that keeps the trogs down and upholds  the natural rights of the aristocracy and the "producing classes".
All sounds very much like "Galt's Gulch" to me...but then Counter Marxist thought clearly predates the Russian Revolution as a matter of record.
***
Of course, Atlas Shrugged is less a novel and more a nine hundred page work of raw ideological warfare,  combat divisions of straw men are shot shelled & strafed on every page by poor persecuted financial supermen & their adoring passive aggressive superwomen.
Well what of it?
The Chimes at Midnight is nothing but raw ideological warfare, but Humble Elias at least tries to keep it short and simple.
And if he can't do that, he will always lunge for the cheap laughs.




Saturday, October 13, 2012

Scott Brown collected a $10K

campaign contribution from the infamous "compounding pharmacy" at the center of a deadly meningitis outbreak.
He also signed a "bipartisan letter" to the DEA making the usual premature deregulatory noises...

I get the impression that if a $10K campaign contribution was on the line Scott Brown would happily sign a leaf that blew thru his open window, plague or no plague.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Congrats to Former State Senator Brown

For making Bird Colonel in the Maryland National Guard back in August, I hadn't heard the good news til I cracked open the Boston Globe this morning.
Must be a heady feeling, seven whole days in Afghanistan dodging mosquitos in full camies and a nice phat pension coming your way whenever the ride is over.
And all for what amounts to a part time job as a lawyer in the Judge Advocate's Division it's a sweet deal that would bring tears to the eyes of Billy Bulger himself.
To think there are veterans wandering the streets homeless with not one tenth of Colonel Brown's retirement prospects...makes yuh think don't it?
Oh to live in a Republic where the Lawyers are compensated at Four Times the Rate of the National Heroes!!

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Oh and Mitt Romney's lurch to the center

re. abortion lasted exactly twenty four hours, on Tuesday he was promising not to restrict access, late yesterday he caved and started calling himself "a pro-life candidate" again.
Geez Ralph Reed sez "shit" and Mitt whimpers "What Color"?
***
However a twenty four hour turnaround time is a new record even for Romney normally he walks it back after at least a forty eight hour interval, ah well the breakneck pace of modern campaigning and all like that....
***
Still whether any of you out there are pro or anti choice, how can you trust someone who has changed his mind so many times?? And Romney cannot ever be a good President if the only people who truly trust him on the issues are those that have the whip hand over him.
Y'know like the religious right etc....

Y'know if the President wants to

load the gender gap a bit more in his own favor, he could always try to convince the Secretary of State to stay on thru the 2014 mid term elections.  Hilary Clinton has become a symbol of public strength for a lot of women voters out there, if she signaled her willingness to stay on the job for the foreseeable future, the President would reap the benefit on election day...
of course she has to announce it, gotta keep dat "Tweets from Hilary" mojo goin'...

Just sayin'...

If the Vice President wants to win the debate tonight

he would do well to take a page from Adlai Stevenson.

No not the liberal caricature of "Dr. Strangelove" fame, but the prosecutor tucked into the Russians at the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Drive your conclusions from the facts, highlight your opponent's hypocrisy, state your own goals clearly....and don't let Ryan slip off into conservative fantasyland.
It worked for Stevenson...and expectations were set pretty low for him going into the above linked Security Council Meeting....The Veep should pay some heed to the historic precedent.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Romney's "October Surprise"...

Just in time for leaf-peepin' season, The Former Viceroy has changed his mind about abortion for a sixth time and noted that as President he would not seek any new laws  "restricting access".
He must be desperate to change his profile with women voters at this point, what else accounts for this epic flip flop?
Keep in mind a scant six months ago he was loud in his intentions to defund Planned Parenthood and could not wait to appoint anti abortion witchburners to the Supreme Court.
Moreover the 2012 GOP platform opposes abortion even in case of rape....
Well keep in mind, Romney is a master of duplicitous smarm,  nowhere in the above flip flop does he rule out appointing Ralph Reed to the Supreme Court or passive aggressively defunding Planned Parenthood as part of some phony budget crisis....but he won't propose "new laws" to "restrict access"....Like hell he won't.
Romney is lying, he has been lying all thru-out his political career, the lies are the dark side of his intellectual disconnect from the great  issues of our times. If the issues are mere rhetorical abstractions to be gamed in order to garner votes for Romney (as I have argued elsewhere) then indeed why wouldn't he deliberately lie in order win an election?
It is one of the few natural things about Romney's public persona quite frankly...

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Romney wants to...

arm the Syrian rebels, the very avoid the Israelis are begging us to decline & avoid.
Well...this is Romney's freakish belligerence in full flood, he opposed intervention in Libya until Colonel Khadaffi fled Tripoli in a cloud of perfume, then he claimed it was all his idea til Al Queda killed our Ambassador month then the Former Viceroy was back screaming "failure".  In a bid to get out in front he is doubling down on Syria in a fashion that allows him to boast if Assad falls and or continue to run his month like a berserker if the regime manages to perpetuate itself.
However it is one thing to deny Col. Khadaffi access to air power and it's another to arm a bunch of Arab militias along the Israeli border....
I don't see it.
Frankly knowing Mitt Romney the way I do (He could screw up a two car funeral) I'd sooner trust those aforementioned tank generals in Brussels with their dreams of one last almighty Battle of Kursk before I'd start handing out M-16's to Syrian militiamen.
Just remember THAT is how Al Queda got started back when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan...

Monday, October 08, 2012

Pure Snarkage....

As opposed to the adulterated stuff you get from all those other blogs....

Nonetheless it occurs to me that the USA has fought two land wars in the past ten years in Iraq and in Afghanistan along with a parallel war against the Al Queda Terrorist Group.
And in all that violence and battlefield mayhem, the only war that Lieutenant Colonel Scott Brown of the Maryland National Guard managed to fight in all that time is his own personal "indian war" he is waging from every podium and cross roads in this Commonwealth.
I would point out that army has a perpetual manpower shortage overseas, I mean if Lt. Colonel can ever stop talking up the Cherokee Threat to Lowell and Brockton and Fall River etc etc etc....

Meanwhile, back in the 24th Middlesex House District...

From Trapelo Road to Belmont Center and up thru brick &mortar money country to Menotomy, I saw about as many "Jim Gammill for State Rep"("The Independent") lawn signs as I did "Dave Rogers for State Rep"(The Democrat") lawnsigns.
Of Tomi Olson ("The Republican") I saw nothing save a handpainted sheet the window of a shop I took to be her headquarters extolling her bona fides as a lifelong resident of Belmont.
Meanwhile Gammill has enough cash on hand to set up a full scale headquarters in Belmont Center, normally independent candidacies for State Rep are the province of threadbare high school seniors and the special delight of the town lunatic.
Jim Gammill though, has better democratic bona fides (Commencing as a drudge in the Carter White House) than even Humble Elias.
And it doesn't help matters yet that Rogers, Gammill & Olson are all running as some species of liberal or another.
Much of this palaver is built around the fact that democrat Dave Rogers doesn't live in Belmont, ill feeling lingering from the primary might give certain candidates the idea that the town was in play in the General Election.
The plan however is absurdly simple, run down the democratic vote for State Rep and let the Independent squeak in, and in return he flips to the democrats or else warms the seat til Belmont Democracy can get it's act together and reclaim the sinecure going forward.
There is a lot to said against such a plan, it is mere inference on my part after all, it likely isn't practical in a district where Obama will do well and the GOP has a limited base...
Nonetheless I can't tell if something is up, or some of the locals just ardently wish that something was up.

Meantime The Belmont League of Women Voters is having a candidates night October 24th at the Chenery Elementary School in Belmont.  Presumably this might be a rare to gauge the ground game of the three candidates for State Rep.


Sunday, October 07, 2012

Meanwhile...

For the fifth straight day, Turkey and Syria have exchanged artillery fire all along their common border.
That is worrisome.
Is it the Syrian rebels trying to draw Ankara into the civil war?
Maybe.
Damascus was certainly quick to apologize, even if they could not reign in their own gunnery over the last five days.
Either The Supreme Opthalmalocrat is in some sort of desperate fight up by his Turkish border one in which he dare not decline the use of artillery or his own generals are trying to set up a showdown with Ankara that'll give them the impetus and excuse to stage a coup and install a new "government of conciliation."
Keep in mind Assad has already survived one "Operation Valkyrie" style attempt on his life, who knows what is in play at the moment behind closed doors?
Myself?
I suspect the rebels are trying to stir Turkey to action...Assad's legions won't last long against a determined assault from without.
He has to know that.
The straw that stirs the drink there is Turkey's membership in NATO at some point the refugee crisis the unstable border situation and the artillery duelsmight prompt full intervention from that venerable military alliance.
I just know somewhere in a secure meeting room in Brussels there are a few aging tank generals just kvelling at the thought one last almighty "Operation Torch" with armored divisions storming down the road to Damascus under a vast cloud of NATO air cover.
I know the current situation doesn't sound like much to the American bystander, but it was naught but a collection of artillery duels along the Amur-Ussuri River in the summer of 1969 that brought the USSR and the People's Republic of China to the brink of nuclear war.


I was beginning to get worried...

because it took such an inexcusably long time to blame the President's campaign woes on John Kerry.

If Joan Vennochi was a television meteorologist she'd blame the next nasty nor'easter on John Kerry.

Waaa-al Ah Swan, but when yew have dislikes instead of beliefs, this is the sort of work that gets turned in to one's editor.

Friday, October 05, 2012

Bill Weld endorses Scott Brown

But as you can see from this photo, Weld did it in a dangerous state of sobriety, so I don't think it counts.
Pretty gutsy for Brown to collect the endorsement of a real republican, normally he is hot for stray and disgruntled democrats to support his candidacy...

7.8 percent unemployment rate?

Hell, I'll take it....any port in a storm as they say down on Drydock Avenue in South Boston.
I think the economy may be reviving somewhat out there, however I have but anecdotal evidence to support this contention.
I know an colleague  who is my age living in recession-wracked Ohio, left one job and was in training for another gig in but three weeks time...fifty somethings like Humble Elias usually have a hellish time changing jobs especially when blessed with advanced degrees in the Humanities.  And there just seems to be more...money floating around out there looking for something to git started...
What the President must needs be doing is flog this sumbitch remind all that any progress on unemployment is exceptional in an election year and grind away on the achievements to date...after all what is Romney's plan? Do to Big Bird what Obama did to Bin Laden....

Thursday, October 04, 2012

THAT

How Romney "prevailed" last night? By lying, machining gunning thru his talking points and threatening to stomp Sesame Street?  Talk about punishing success!!
Gut check time kids....gut check time....

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Debate Prep....

Tonight's debate will not be any species of a cakewalk for the President, let us hope he takes the whole thing very seriously.
As a debater Mitt Romney has certain skills regardless of his chronic charisma deficit and drone on at high speed.
For one thing he knows how to make smarm work for him.
For another, for another he generally gets a pass (for a lot of very complicated reasons too numerous to eructate herein) when starts in with the unctuous father-knows-best condescension.
And based on long experience, he is willing to say anything in order to win...nothing else accounts for the monumental collection of lies, distortions, evasions and flip flops he has acculmulated in pursuit of the US Presidency in the past sixth months alone.
Taken as a whole, Romney is good at colonizing discussion in weird but effective ways a debate about public spending becomes a subtle demonstration of who is better daddy-figure.
Moreover, Mitt has had a bad month, he is pretty much deep into underdog territory, he hasn't said a single common sensical thing for over two months...and as such, he is primed for some sort of a comeback.
Just walking out on stage without lapsing into a berserk fury extolling the spiritual benefits of crystal meth will be enough to score it a win for Romney...The National Media thirsts to tell these kinds of narratives.
Just remember the very gods were againsAt Fritz Mondale in 1984 and he SCHOOLED Ronald Reagan in that first debate.
Anyhow the balloon goes up in a few short hours

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

The Wareham Kid and the Hanging Judge

In last night's appallingly moderated US Senate debate, that two fisted indian fighter from out the bloodcurdling pages of Playgirl Magazine, Hopalong Brown, opined that Antonin Scalia is his favorite Supreme Court Justice.
Well, Scalia is a vengeful tea partier's wet dream, nasty, rigid, authoritarian, puritanical and paranoid thanks to years of prayerful contemplation.
In short a hanging judge, the perfect counterpart to Scott Brown's increasingly inane Lonesome Cowpoke persona.
That is one way to look at it, another way is to see it as a coded signal to paranoid authoritarian catholic intellectuals that Scott Brown is their own personal Man on Horseback. It is gonna be a close election for the US Senate in the Commonwealth this year and every fringe cohort can potential play kingmaker.
Besides with his BC law degree (something he shares with John Kerry BTW), Scott never fails to play at being a lifelong Eagle.
BTW I think it is time for a moratorium on Big Name National TV Journalists moderating debates concerning statewide office in Massachusetts, David Gregory basically disgraced himself last coming off with all the charisma of a jungle missionary trying to teach the Kalahari Bushmen the intricacies of the Council of Trent.


Monday, October 01, 2012

And More Polling

Per the latest poll, Richard Tisei (GOP) is up five points over incumbent democratic congressman John Tierney in the sixth congressional district.
Albeit with thirty percent undecided.
Geez if Brown loses and Tisei wins next month, that means the marquee name in the Massachusetts State GOP will be a gay guy from the South Shore.
The state republicans are likely fine with it overall, they'd nominate a dead dog to office if it polled well, but I wonder how well a gay GOP congressman from the Bay State will go over in the tea partei?
Likely not so well, case in point Barney Frank.
But it'll be an interesting process to watch if it happens.
On the other hand, Tisei might wanna use this eminence as a stepping stone to the Governorship in 2014, although that is an awfully short simmering time in DC before trying to run statewide back home.
Might be something to think about if Tisei can't do any business in Washington, which in turn would put him on a collision course with his former running mate Charlie Baker and who knows maybe even Scott Brown!
Ah but the local GOP doesn't go in for contested primaries if they can avoid it in the big ticket races, still there is a first time for everything.
Ghod Almighty I love politics, I do love it so, it has never lined my pockets but it has never ever failed to amuse and fascinate me.

Professor Maurice Cunningham...

has a very nice blog here....

I like his work, he knows the difference between politics and political science, ideas and idealogy.  And it's good to get a straight political science take on the current round of elections....